> Thank you for a most complete reply. My problem is that one of my sons
> turned on his laptop at home while my Ethernet connected printer was
> turned off. At the time, the printer was identified as DHCP in both the
> printer and the router. We were no longer able to print because the
> router assigned a different IP address form that which the various
> computers were using. If I assign a static IP address to the printer, I
> would think that this should solve the problem, as long is I correctly
> identify the port on each computer. Should I assign the static IP
> address in the printer or in the router (or both)? If I do it in the
> printer ony and the printer is turned off, will this defeat my purpose,
> or will the router still reserve the IP address since it knows it to be
This is exactly why you want to assign a static IP address for the printer
and why it needs to be outside the router's DHCP range. And yes, you would
then go into each computer's Control Panel>Printers and look at the
Properties of the printer. Under the Port settings you can change it to the
correct one. Assigning a static IP address to the printer will solve the
issue you had if you turn the printer off (although I never do turn off my
own printers - it isn't necessary).
On the router, look at the DHCP IP address range. I'll give you examples
based on my network, which is managed by a Linksys router. Obviously your
subnet may be different but the concept is identical.
router address: 192.168.1.1
DHCP IP address range: 192.168.1.100-192.168.1.150
Printer 1: 192.168.1.200
Printer 2: 192.168.1.230
Note that these are all *private* IP addresses; not public ones. Using
private IP addresses (provided by a router to the LAN side) gives you some
protection from the bad guys on the Internet that you don't get when you
have a machine using a public IP address.
All computers on my network are set up to use DHCP for IP and automatic DNS.
> One more question - I am trying out a remote access program called
> logmein. Are you familiar with this? It allows me to access a remote
> computer from the internet after I install a client app on that
> computer. Do you know ifthis requires a static IP address, or doesn't it
From the LogMeIn FAQs (https://secure.logmein.com/products/pro/faq.asp
"LogMeIn does support dynamic IP addresses. LogMeIn software is coded in a
way that doesn't require the IP Address to be known prior to connection.
Remotely Anywhere, however, does require a static external IP Address, but
can be accessed through the LAN, by using the LAN IP Address as well."
Further questions about LogMeIn should be addressed to them. A cursory look
at their website tells me you probably will want to pay for the Pro
version. You can also use free remote control like UltraVNC and for that
you would need to:
1. On the computer you want to access from outside the LAN (not the router)
set a static IP address outside the DHCP range; i.e., something like
192.168.190 using my Linksys example. This computer is called the "host".
The computer outside the LAN is called the "remote".
2. On the router (not the computer), do port forwarding to 192.168.1.190.
You need to find out what ports the particular application (like UltraVNC
or LogMeIn's Remotely Anywhere) uses and forward the traffic over those
ports to 192.168.190. Another popular commercial (not free) program to do
this is pcAnywhere.
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